MP-07 is Grimlock!?

[GoktimusPrime]

Kawamori is a very good mecha designer, as seen in Macross, Ghost In The Shell (movie) and other stuff he's done... but he's not very good as a chief Transformer designer. Yes, he was on the design team for the Diaclone Car Robots, but he wasn't the head designer, Ono Koujin was. Kawamori on the other hand was the head designer for Masterpiece Starscream and Hybrid Series Convoy with dubious results for Transfans. :/

The Macross Frontier Valkyries look sweet as - so he definitely still has incredible skills as a mecha designer... I just don't think that he's all that good as a Transformer designer. :/

Macross Frontier Valkyries...

"Ozma Lee" (Skull Squadron) VF-25 Fighter Mode


"Ozma Lee" (Skull Squadron) VF-25 Battroid mode


"Alto Saotome" VF-25 Gerwalk mode

[Tober]

I think his work in Macross shows that he is maybe running out of ideas when it comes to developing Valkyries. The VF-25 looks like .Valkyrie Remix' - Mostly a VF-0S mixed with the SV-51 and some YF-19 as well. It is possiby his most refined Valk to date tho and a beautiful design. Shame that Yamato won't be releasing a toy version initially tho. Hopefully Bandai will come through.

I think his recent work on KISS-DUM is a better testement to his mecha skills. Other recent series of note are Aquarion, Eureka 7 and Armoured Core (game).

I'm not sure how much blame you can attribute to Kawamori for the changes to MP-3 (sans color). TAKARA had a prefectly good mold ready to go and then they bought him in... why? He didn't just kick in their doors and demand that changes be made - he was hired to MAKE changes because there must have been changes that TAKARA wanted made. They must have given him some sort of re-design brief.

My personal theory is that the design for starscream was a part of the Decepticon BINALTECH series that TAKARA was exploring. BINALTECH was cancelled and so the Starscream design was bought into the MP line instead because work had already been done on it to extent of being production ready. MP-3 really looks like a modern update of the F-15 that is asthetically more reminiscent of the BINALTECH series as far as the Japanese Samurai armour goes.

[kup]

True, the blame for Greenscream is squarely Takara's fault not Kawamori. After reading the history of it, that much is clear.

Takara basically hired the wrong man for the job, Kawamori may be skilled and revered for his Transforming mecha designs but his style simply does not generally suit Transformers. Takara basically wanted to have some sort of cooperation with Kawamori due to his 'celebrity' status in the Japanese geek world and unfortunately they gave him the completed MP Starscream mold and asked him to do as he wished to improve it. Kawamori did just that, he incorporated his own style on the existing mold without keeping Transformers or the character of Starscream in mind. By his own account he mentions that he wanted to do thing like give the figure a 'Samurai' look and that sort of thing which is more in line with the look of his own designs rather than the Starscream character.

As Gok mentioned earlier, chances are because Takara gave Kawamori the freedom to do as he wished with the mold and his 'celebrity' status, they could not deny his 'improvements' without offending him and his millions of fans. So they just had to go with it.
To his credit however, he did improve the Plane mode considerably and his changes there did not directly affect the 'Starscream' look of the alt mode. His mistake was actually changing the tail fins of the plane by attaching them to his hip instead of his legs. That change with the tail fins attached to the hips were not necessary to the improvements made on the the alt mode but he did it anyway and it severely handicaps the figure's articulation and contributes to taking away the Classic Starscream Seeker look. He could have left them on the legs but he wanted that 'Samurai' look so he attached the tail fin assembly to his hip to resemble swords. Of course the next thing and the one with the most impact were the colors and plastic used. Kawamori is mostly a transforming mecha model designer, not a toy designer. His target audience are mainly collectors and adults who would not normally play with the toy, so he went for what he perceived as appropriate plastic for the mold which is generaly good for model kits but terrible for Transformers. He also attempted some form of realism with the colors and therefore went for the seaweed green (dont ask) and dark magenta like chest, again he went for his own style forgetting or not knowing that this toy is supposed to represent the character of Starscream.

Takara should have given Kawamori strict guidelines in which to make his improvements but instead gave him the freedom to modify the mold as he pleased. Basically they hired the wrong man for the job.

The facts above were actually taken from Kawamori's interview on MP Starcream, so they come straight from the source.
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Silver surfer vaporizer

[Tober]

Takara gave him carte blanche - plus agreed that no additional changes would be made after he had finished. In an interview Kawamori stated that he wanted to take the realism of the F-15 even further but when he reviewed it realised that the design no longer looked enough like Starscream so he reworked it again. The arms were also changed because of the inclusion of the conformal tanks, they have that kinda weird Popeye look to them. Origionally the nulla-rays were attached to the arms by a swing-bar that expanded to position them under the wings in alt mode.

The Animation color version of SS looks like SS. It's the weird green color scheme that throws people off. Inside the instruction booklet Kawamori stated that he chose that color because it is more realistic - but there are NO green F-15s, not even Japanese naval F-15 are green. Apparently the green tone was chosen to blend the colors of the blue arms into the main body.

[Lord_Zed]

I think Kup summed it up pretty well, Kawamori made changes to Starscream inkepping with the sort of designs he creates, Sleek, semi-realistic. Generaly speaking the stlye of G1 is beefy and block like so having someone who designs lithe mecha with long flowin fins and the like is obviously going to be moving away from G1. I happen to like the original MP starscream because he is a Kawamori interpretation for Starscream, but I do agree that he is divergent from Prime who is basicaly a recreation of G1 cartoon prime.

I think his work in Macross shows that he is maybe running out of ideas when it comes to developing Valkyries. The VF-25 looks like .Valkyrie Remix' - Mostly a VF-0S mixed with the SV-51 and some YF-19 as well. It is possiby his most refined Valk to date tho and a beautiful design.

I think a lot of artists when they get older get stuck in there ways, and tend not to try anything as revolutionary as they did in thier youth. so all Kawamoris new Valkyries seem quite similar, also working in 3D has forced him to abandon the cartoony changes in proportion common in his older valkyrie designs. (the VF1's wings and nose cone, and the YF 19's legs are a good example of significant changes in proportion)

[Tober]

I think a lot of artists when they get older get stuck in there ways, and tend not to try anything as revolutionary as they did in thier youth. so all Kawamoris new Valkyries seem quite similar, also working in 3D has forced him to abandon the cartoony changes in proportion common in his older valkyrie designs. (the VF1's wings and nose cone, and the YF 19's legs are a good example of significant changes in proportion)

Actually he still does most of his preliminary designs in Lego. His lego model of the VF-1 is how he convinced Takatoku that the transformation of the Valkyrie was possible/achieveable. He also uses graph paper to create proportions and measure volumes along with his own illustration abilities. It's his design team that creates the CAD and 3D prototypes for visualisation.